happy blogentine's day: the weekly brosaleigh playlist
In the spirit of my blogroll, I would like to use today (Valentine's Day) not to exalt romantic love, nor cry into a pile of conversation hearts, but to send a sort of blogentine to some of my favorite musical curators and the great work they do.
You know what I love? A good playlist. Though our life's technology has largely moved past the era of gel pen-written mix CDs passed among friends 'n' lovers, the right playlist can capture that same sort of handcrafted care.
I've written some playlist reviews for the blog before — one of my first ever I Enjoy Music posts back in May 2023 was a review of a VERY Radiohead and Björk-heavy playlist called "Running around on all fours biting people" that I found on the music channel of a mystical influencer's Discord. I also reviewed the hazy, chilled-out playlist Deadbeat Summer. And now I have another playlist - a playlist to send a blogentine to - why yes - it's the weekly brosaleigh playlist...
I was alerted to this playlist phenomenon by friend-of-the-blog Pacing, whose editorial genius knows no bounds (also this is me showing that if you tweet something to me SEVEN MONTHS AGO it WILL go into my mental blog folder. "don't you...forget about me" - Simple Mindz)
The brosaleigh curator is Josaleigh Pollett, who makes slanted and enchanted indie pop in Salt Lake City. I listened to their 2023 album In the Garden, By The Weeds this morning on an errand run that had me Tokyo drifting into parallel parking spaces all over Los Angeles, and I admired its clear-eyed introspection and potent musical arrangements. The album reminds me of incense burning in a holder: a steady base for structure, a stream of heady smoke drifting outward.
kodugadi
Turns out Josaleigh has kick-ass musical sensibilities beyond their own music — this week's brosaleigh playlist is...wait a second, let me see if I can get into Pitchfork mode...
Caught between stasis and catharsis, this week's brosaleigh playlist simmers with anticipation for an unknowable future—par for the course for a February that seems to be sucking everyone's lifeforce from their bodies like Ecto Cooler through a straw. For every blast of pure and present energy—like Liquid Mike's "K2," a power-pop-punk song that absolutely demands to be blasted at top volume from one of those open-air Jeeps that hot teenagers drive in early 2000s romantic comedies—there's a softer and more amorphous interlude, such as Dogs On Shady Lane's "Pile of Photos." "Love is not a given / What the fuck is that shit?" sings Tori Hall, gently pondering how and when to leave a situation gone bad.
Other standouts: "I Love the Sound of Structured Class" by The Paranoid Style, a pithy New Wave stomper starring a very charming, been-there-done-that narrator; and "My Peccadilloes" by True Green, which celebrates the hell out of '90s indie rock slackerism and contains one of the cleverest chorus couplets I've heard in recent memory:
"It's a dog-eat-dog world," said the dog with a taste for dogs
"Every man for himself," said the man for himself
The doldrums are evident, and it's tempting to give into them entirely, but the tenth and final song is "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five (Underdubbed Mix)" by Paul McCartney & Wings, which hops in on a buoyant bassline and bounces to a radiant conclusion. The sun will come out tomorrow, you freaks! Just give it time.
Score: 10.0 (sorry for the perfect score, maybe it makes me a weenie but you can't put a number on a vibe, and to me, APAP: All Playlists Are Perfect).
Here's the full link aggregation for Josaleigh Pollett's tunes! And thanks for reading I Enjoy Music. If you like it, tell a friend about it.
